MoyerBlickBar

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Moyer / Blick-Bar by Will Davis

..with assistance from Peter Weil

The lineage of the highly elusive Moyer, and slightly less elusive Blick-Bar, appears shrouded in mystery. Some information is available from the literature, and some from advertisements and from the patent office. Here, we'll try to reconcile all of these and develop a cogent historical and technical history.

The Moyer was a four-bank, front strike "visible" machine developed by Emmit G. Latta and Harvey A. Moyer. The name of the original manufacturing company so far remains elusive, as does the intital date.

At right, a patent granted to Moyer and Latta. Frequently, the patents granted to one or both also give half the rights as assignors to the two, ensuring equal share. This patent was filed in April 1905, and granted along with the next one in May 1906. This is well before the printed launch dates for the Moyer, as given, for example by Michael Adler (1913) and Wilfred Beeching (1916.) The machine is not mentioned in the book published in 1909 by G. C. Mares, although this may only mean that it was not yet on the market in Europe.

At left, patent granted to Moyer on the same day as that seen above granted to both Moyer and Latta. It was filed much later, in February 1906 and may have been a division of the original to clarify the type bar action.

Depression of the key lever causes the pin protruding through the key lever slot to pull the intermediate lever forward. This pulls on the link, connected directly to the eye on the bottom of the type bar, raising it to the platen. Length, inward bend and slot length of the intermediate levers varied from the center of the keyboard outward.

At right, closeup of the original style of type bar mounting and bearing. You don't have to be a mechanical engineer to tell that this would quickly become troublesome, and the designers quickly went to work on improvements.

Provided for interest is another overall scheme for the Moyer. This differs from the above in the overall orientation of the key levers, but uses the "old style" bearings for the type bars. It is clear that something was afoot-- which was probably the struggle to get a machine that could be built economically and efficiently, at low enough cost, and that would stand up in service. Time and again, the smaller companies suffered protracted periods of trial and error development.

Two different designs for conversion of the Moyer to ball bearing type bars. This was an industry trend, and many machines adopted such bearings not only in the type bar basket, but used ball bearings in the carriage as well. The original bearing design would have been a sorry comparison to these for maintenance of alignment.

The later of the two bearing designs seen above was filed in 1906, but not granted until 1913. No records exist of this time period, and it is true that the Moyer is an extremely rare machine -- if any still exist.

What is sure, though, is that eventually this machine DID appear in series production, although very briefly in the 1916-1917 period only. It was manufactured for about a year by the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company as its Blick-Bar model.

Here are two ads from Peter Weil for the Blick-Bar. Both are dated 1916.

The ball-bearing type bar construction was lauded as a great advance (although others already had it) and can plainly be seen in the ad at right. It matches the bearing patent seen directly above it on this page.

This machine may still have had its share of problems; it is said that when George Blickensderfer died in 1917, the Blick-Bar was dropped.

It has been written, in contemporary account, that Harry A. Smith bought the tooling for the Blick-Bar from the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company, and spent a great deal of money over the next several years actually attempting to restart production. He even began to build a factory in Elkhart, Indiana, but nothing ever came of the venture (although it was still prospective in 1922.)

Our final illustration is something really interesting. This is a patent filed by Emmit Latta in 1911, granted 1914. It is specifically stated in the text that this is a design for converting "the Moyer typewriter to basket shift."

Looking at the drawing, we can see that a combination eccentric strap and cam arrangement would have been used; this is very like the shift arrangement in the basket-shifted three-bank double-shift Harris Visible. The rest of the key lever and type bar action is largely intact, with only the final link from intermediate lever to type bar being required to flex when the shift was operated -- which, by the way, is a "down shift segment" in this design.

Can you add to this article? Use the button at left to e-mail me if you can.

MAY 9, 2007. It has been a long time since this page on the Moyer / Blick-Bar has been amended, and just ten minutes ago I received an e-mail from ED NEUERT who has provided a newspaper clipping from late October, 1913. I'll cover essentially the content of the clipping, and then give my views on it. It is from the New York Times.

The clipping says that, at that time, two major stockholders of the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company intended to call a special meeting, with issuance of proxies for voting by other stockholders, to convince the board of directors to cease the license manufacturing of the Moyer design typewriter. Neither is a Blickensderfer family member, it seems, but their holding together amounted to 1/6 of the shares. The two men indicate that the company was essentially paying large royalties on manufacture of an unproven design; they also state that the actual rights to the design were still in question. Their feeling was that this venture could doom the company, and that it should stay with the small, inexpensive type-wheel design and not attempt to enter the "high-priced" standard typewriter market.

NOW THEN, this clipping tells us several things. First, it appears that the machine was either experimental or in pre-production at this October 1913 date, and that this was occurring under a license-manufacturing deal in the Blickensderfer plant. We of course do not yet know whether Moyer and Latta attempted to build the machine elsewhere first, but we can place it at the Blickensderfer plant now by the date given by Adler. The two men are quite clear on the fact that rights were not yet settled, but that royalties were to be paid (seemingly, obviously to Moyer / Latta but this is not stated.) One might then assume that, by the time the machine became known as the Blick-Bar and was advertised a couple of years later that the original deal had either been settled, or else that Moyer and Latta defaulted and Blickensderfer ended up with the whole thing (design rights and all) through confiscation by right. None of the patents covering the machine are assigned to Blickensderfer Manufacturing, at least at time of issuance, so the inventors must have made some other deal with Blickensderfer long after the patents were granted.

What does all this mean? It means a few specific things. 1.) By October 1913 the Moyer-design machine was being developed and/or built in the Blickensderfer plant. 2.) By October 1913 the actual rights to the machine were not settled, and Blickensderfer, while making the machine, was paying royalties to someone -- most likely Moyer and Latta. 3.) At least two people had an inkling that the company's future would be threatened by the machine, and they said the design was unproven. This supports the information in the main article in which we find evidence of difficult, protracted development problems. 4.) If we look at the advertising available and other dates, given by other previous authors than Adler and assume the Blick-Bar appeared around 1916 we find about two years in which events are unknown. One might assume the directorial hassle over the machine and actual development of the machine consumed this time frame, and both the finalization of righs and production agreements (and money) and perfection of the design would have to have occurred prior to an assumed 1916 introduction date for the machine as the Blick-Bar.

This is all very fascinating -- so my hat is off to Ed Neuert for finding and sending along this information!